Profile of Dennis Lo

After 22 years of persistent research, Dennis Lo succeeded in decoding a fetal genetic blueprint found within maternal blood. The advance is already saving lives by allowing pregnant women to be noninvasively screened for genetic abnormalities in fetuses they carry. For this achievement and many others, Lo was elected in 2013 as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences. He directs the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he also serves as a professor of medicine and chemical pathology. Dennis Lo. Image courtesy of Michael Perini. Lo’s interest in science dates back to his childhood in Kowloon, Hong Kong. His mother, a music teacher, and his father, a successful psychiatrist, introduced Lo to colorfully illustrated books on nature and biology. Lo says, “Those years of reading about science had me excited as an observer and had triggered my desire to become one day involved first hand in scientific discoveries.” During his sixth year of grammar school, Lo passed a competitive examination and was promoted to the secondary section of the prestigious St. Joseph’s College in Hong Kong. A biology teacher at the school, Stephen Hui, was an early mentor. “He was the one who first taught me about the molecule DNA and about the then-new science of recombinant DNA technology,” Lo says. In Hui’s class, he recalls seeing a biology textbook photograph of scientists James Watson and Francis Crick standing in front of King’s College Chapel at the University of Cambridge. Lo says, “This had planted a seed inside me that would eventually lead to my studying medicine in Cambridge.” Lo followed a fast track at Cambridge, completing his course work in preclinical medicine in two years, instead of the usual three. The third year was devoted to research …